The New York Times announced today it will expand its “coverage and audience-engagement initiative in Australia,” sending several staffers to the land down under. One of the exports is Splinter fav Bari Weiss, an editor and dipshit whose greatest op-ed hits include her love letter to the dumbest “intellectual” provocateurs on the far right and trying to get freelancers fired for criticizing an article she personally liked. According to the Times’ announcement, Weiss “will be writing about Australia’s role in the world, politics and feminism, and also working on partnerships and events.”

My question: Is Bari Weiss being sent to Australia by the New York Times as punishment, much as my native country of Britain used to cruelly export its criminals to Australia? Has Weiss committed enough atrocities against opinion writing that she is being permanently sent to as far away a place as possible? Would a person with as prestigious and presumably well-compensated a job as Weiss voluntarily move to Australia, a country filled with spiders that are literally the size of a small pizza and, worse still, Vegemite?

Of course they wouldn’t. Bari Weiss is being banished to the colonies like an 18th century apple thief and you will never convince me otherwise.